Writing Acquisition

Writing Acquisition

1. B.M Kroll (1981) : The four stages in the development of writing skills.

   • Phase one-Preparation (Until age 5-6)
     • Children will learn the basic skills of handwriting and spelling in the following order of drawing and sign writing, making letter forms, writing capital letters, writing child's name, forming words and sentences and finally writing short texts.
   • Phase two- Consolidation (ages 6-8)
     • Writing catches up with speech, the child writes longer texts which is more colloquial and in a context bound style.
   • Phase three- Differentiation (ages 9-10)
     • Children learn to distinguish between speech and writing.
   • Phase four- Integration (11 Years)
     • Children develop their own personal styles.

2. Barclay (1996)

   • Stage 1- Scribbling
     • Random marks on a page, gaining the skill of holding the pencil.
   • Stage 2- Mock handwriting
     • Children draw shapes on paper but it's still not possible to work out what it is.There is an attempt to write letters.
   • Stage 3- Mock letters
     • Children produce random letters but still not aware of spacing or matching sounds and symbols.
   • Stage 4- Conventional letters
     • \start to match sounds and symbols, words are unlikely to be spaced out and children start using initial consonants to represent words.
   • Stage 5- Invented spelling
     • Most spelling is phonetic, some familiar words are spelled correctly.
   • Stage 6- Appropriate spelling
     • Sentences become more complex
   • Stage 7- Correct Spelling

3. J.R Gentry (1982)- Spelling

   • 1.Pre-communicative stage
     • Child realises that symbols can be used to create a message however they invent symbols.
   • 2. Semi- phonetic stage
     • They begin to realise that letters have sounds and will abbreviate words that they don't know.
   • 3. Phonetic stage
     • The child spells through sound symbol correspondence and may not be aware that some letters aren't acceptable in english.
   • 4. Transitional stage
     • Child has basic conversations in English and start to become aware of spelling patterns.
   • 5. Correct stage
     • Child knows about basic patterns and word structures. They have a large automatic spelling vocabulary and can distinguish between homonyms and homophones.

4. Typical errors

   • Getting the initial letter wrong
     • Suggests the child isn't ready to write
   • Using phonetic alternatives
     • 1. A form of spelling is chosen that follows a pattern from another word but is wrong in context. like 'nessessary' as in 'lesson'
     • 2. A form of spelling chosen that isn't possible, like 'perfikt'.
   • Problems with prefixes and suffixes.
     • When children don't know how words are put together, like 'makeing'
   • Misspelling unstressed words
   • Dropping consonants
     • 'ofen'

5. Categories of spelling error

   • Insertion
     • Adding letters
   • Omission
     • Leaving out letters
   • Substitution
     • Substituting one letter for another
   • Transposition
     • reversing the correct order of letters in words
   • Phonetic spelling
     • Using sound awareness to guess how to spell
   • Over/ under generalising of spelling rules
     • where a rule is not appropriate to apply or under generalising it by only applying it in one context
   • Salient sounds
     • Writing only key sounds

6. Graphology

   • Ascenders (b,d)
   • Descenders (p,y,q)
   • Directionality (writing right to left)
   • Linearity (we write in horizontal lines)
   • Orientation of letters (some may be inverted)
   • Lower case (a) , Upper case (D)
   • Size of handwriting (the older the child the smaller the handwriting

7. Types of writing

   • Rothery
     • Observational, report, non fictional, narrative.
   • Britton
     • Expressive, poetic and transactional
   • Perera
     • Chronological and non chronological